KNOWLEDGE INSTITUTIONS GENDER : an east-west comparative study

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KNOWLEDGEINSTITUTIONSGENDERan east-west
comparative study

• Times and trajectories
• Alice Cervinková and Lisa Garforth
• With contributions from Marcela Linkova Ulrike
  Felt Ismo Kantola Zuzana Kiczkova Anne
  Kovaleinen Seppo Poutanen Lisa Sigl, Mariana
  Szapuová Veronika Woehrer.

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Why times?

• A way in to researchers experiences and
  meanings...
• ... working around / beneath top-down and
  official constructions of research activities and
  careers
• Resisting / revisiting spatial metaphors of
  epistemic life
• Reflexivity the times of KNOWING

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What times? A conceptual framework

• TIMESCAPES (Adam 1994)
• multidimensionality situatedness
• Timeframes
• Timing
• Tempo
• TRAJECTORIES narratives of past-present-future.
  Career times.
• EVERYDAY TIMES daily times in epistemic life
  spaces.

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Trajectories Contexts imagining excellence

• European and national policies
• Intense political prioritisation of research.
• Glittering futures of the knowledge economy.
• National narratives
• lagging behind catching up staying ahead.

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Trajectories The normative linear career

• I did a degree. I did a PhD immediately
  afterwards. One short postdoc and then one longer
  one... I got a nice comfortable well-funded
  position. And then I got a lectureship and I
  didnt drop off the bandwagon.
• F bioscientist UK
• Natural sciences
• Discrete ages and stages unbroken trajectory
• The apprenticeship is quite long and pretty
  intense. If you drop out its so difficult to get
  back in again. M bioscientist, UK.

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Trajectories Patchworks and other horizontal
careers

• ...one potential frightful scenario is that I
  dont have the guts to leave this world, that
  Ill be here hanging on in short term temp
  jobs...
• M social scientist, FI
• I am not going to stick around as some
  desperate university hang-around that you see at
  the university, some grants here, some grants
  there, then youre unemployed, and then you have
  a project for three years. If I cant establish
  my own position permanent position, Im
  quitting.
• F bioscience postgrad, FI

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TrajectoriesPatchworks and horizontal careers

• For many researchers, calendar time continued to
  run but career time was stopped or dispersed
• Women were more likely to be left behind or
  hanging on in their careers.
• Many struggled to narrate their careers
  past/present/future did not add up to the
  normative ideal or their biographical
  narratives offered alternative criteria for
  success
• They often experienced lack of institutional
  recognition despite performing valuable work
• .

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Everyday time

• Trying to fit everything into your day...its
  like a parcel that you need to pack.
• F bioscientist, UK
• When Im lucky, I am just about in time...But
  rather it is typical for my work that I always
  have too much and that Im never done, and that
  always something new turns up ... Thats
  typical for science. Social scientist, AT

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Everyday timeno time to think?

• Sometimes I think again a day has passed and I
  havent managed to do a single experiment, ok?
  And at the same time I am my most efficient
  worker. Bioscientist, AT.
• Acceleration and overload loss of slow,
  immersive times of reflection loss of autonomy
  and collegiality
• BUT time to think is also embedded in the daily
  times of material epistemic cultures, and
  thinking is contingent and multiple

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Gendering everyday time

• Finding time and making time in the everyday is
  conflictual, gendered and political
• I think its fair to say that women in the
  department do a lot of invisible caretaking which
  frees up the time of these men in the department.
  Theres something about women not allowing
  ourselves to do that. Not being ahead of the
  game, saying you want to protect your time and
  absenting yourself to do that.
• F social scientist, UK

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Beyond work-life balanceTime disciplines in the
audit academy

• Taking time and moving time
• Time autonomy and flexibility
• Finding time and making time
• But its output oriented
• Audit/performativity internalised individual
  time disciplines (career, excellence,
  competition)

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Thinking across work and lifeThe vocational mode

• Watch out, I live sociology, which means I
  dont work! social scientist, SK.
• Dissolving work-life boundaries, performing the
  epistemic self
• Long hours in the vocational mode
• Its not about the amount of time you spend at
  work, but rather how you feel that this is a
  vocational job, so that the ones who feel that
  vocation act naturally in a way that meets their
  own norms...And again, if you dont feel it as
  your vocation then youre simply in the wrong
  field. bioscientist, FI

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Gender and the vocational modeFinding time to
not think in epistemic life spaces?

• ... there is this sort of academic culture which
  I suspect men do more than women of working every
  hour God sends. And I have absolutely no desire
  to work every hour god sends...I want to have a
  life as well. If you look at academics who have
  got on ... theyre all-consumed by it. And they
  love it. I find it interesting but I want to have
  a life beyond it. F social scientist, UK.
• If I had to choose, I would without question
  leave this and live a life, not bury myself in
  some science.F social scientist, FI.

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Times and trajectoriesConclusions

• Adding it up?
• Everyday times and trajectories
  incommensurabilities and conflicts
• Whose time regimes?
• Vocation as a gendered mode of ordering
• Speaking to policy
• Recognising and supporting patchwork, horizontal
  and moving careers
• Work and life beyond the rational management of
  clock time